My Life In Hope…A Core Desired Feelings Collection

A key part of The Desire Map process is about uncovering your Core Desired Feelings – the feelings that make you feel good and that you want to live in as much as possible.  When you get clear on how you want to feel and align your routines and goals to generate those feelings every day, week, month, year – well, that’s a wonderful life of feeling good!

This is all fine, but for desire to work, it needs action – real integration into daily life as well as the big goals.  Deliberately doing things in ways that will make you feel good both whilst you’re doing those things, and when you achieve what you set out to achieve.

Feel good now…and when you reach your goals.

Over the next several blog posts, I’d like to share with you my life with each of my Core Desired Feelings to show you what they mean to me and how I integrate them into my life.

Today’s Core Desired Feeling is…Hope.

~*~

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What does it mean to me?

Joy.  Expectancy.  Purpose.

Trust.

That everything will turn out ok.  That I can do it.  That I am good enough.

That I am enough.

Chin up, eyes forwards – we got work to do and we’ll love it.

I’ve always been full of Hope.  I remember, as a child, playing in the garden in summer and pausing to look up at the moon in the dusktime skies and feeling so overcome with Hope for my future, dusk-dreaming at how awesome my life will be when I grow up: working and serving in ways aligned with who I am, that I will have everything that I need, and there will be love.

But when there were times I lost Hope – my, that aching numbness made me question whether life was worth it. , if I’m really honest.  A life without Hope, for me, is a life of being stuck, of no direction, no movement.

It’s Hope that drives me forwards.

There’s a distinction to be drawn between blind hopefulness and Hope.  Sadly, from a young age in a lot of societies, particularly Western societies, you’re taught that Hope is not worth having because it can and will be dashed, and the pain of that is too much.  We’re taught that it’s foolish to Hope because it’s no different to wishing for the impossible to happen.

We’re taught that “you’ll grow up out of silly dreams soon enough.”

Yet, it is in Hope that dreams reside.

The question really is: you have your dreams, your wishes, your Hopes,

What are you going to do about them?

 

Are you going to make them come to life?

Sure, if you make your dreams come to life, you’ll need a new dream, a new Hope to go for afterwards when the excitement of achievement eventually wears off.

A lesson I had to learn was to actually sit with and enjoy the victory of achievement.

YES!

…and to not immediately say, “Next!”

For me, the whole process of dreaming, then finding ways to make it real, and working tomake them real: I love it all.

Take that away from me?  I feel lost – and I don’t like feeling lost: hopeless, powerless, purposeless, entropy, apathy…why carry on?

I have Hope because I am alive.  I am alive because I have Hope.

 

Why the word “Hope” over other words?

It took me a while to realise that Hope was a Core Desired Feeling, to be honest!  It was only after going through the Desire Map process for the third time whilst training to become a Desire Map Facilitator that it occurred to me: my life was woven in threads of Hope, and it was one of the ways I really wanted to feel as much as possible.

Sometimes your Core Desired Feelings are so second nature that you don’t recognise them initially, until you deliberately go looking for them – in your patterns and behaviours, in times when you feel like you’ve lost them.  Sometimes you can barely put a word on it, let alone an image, or a sound – you just feel it.  That’s ok too – giving Core Desired Feelings words helps you invoke them when you need them, but you don’t always need words to describe it: anything quick, easy and almost immediate is what’s really needed to invoke them, so if it’s something you need to do rather than say, then do that thing, and have it easily ready for you to use.

The other reason that I chose “Hope” was because, after learning about the psychology of Hope, there was no better word to describe this feeling evoked within me.

Hope.

 

How do I use “Hope” to guide my goals?

When I think about my goals, can I feel into the beautiful future where those goals have been accomplished?  How will daily life be with that goal completed in my life?  And what about everyone and everything else in this future?

If I get good feelings when thinking about this future, then I seriously consider going for it.  If I get bad feelings, I don’t choose it.

Trusting my gut reaction – another lesson Hope teaches me.

“Your body is the best tool for discernment.”
­- Danielle LaPorte – 2013 Emerging Women conference

It’s true, y’know.

 

What do I do each day to feel that CDF?

I make time to daydream about the future I want to bring about.

All the goals that feel the best both when going for them and when actually hitting them are the ones that begin with a dream.

For something wonderful.

For something better.

For miracles.

For purpose.

The other aspect of daydreaming is that it allows me to play with purpose and dedication – what will I next dedicate myself to?

Day-dreaming is how you also begin to bond with the possible goals you want to make.  The more you bond with goals, the more willingness you have to persevere when you reach obstacles.  This is just one aspect of agency – the willingness to achieve a goal and the strength of self-belief that you will achieve it.  Bonding with goals helps increase your agency, and the more agency you have?  The more likely you’ll achieve your goals.

 

I spend time in forests and look into the sky.

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I love forests above any other landscape: the hustling leaves, the shy lives of other creatures within, the gentle low hum of the tree boughs and trunks, and sturdy ground beneath my feet.  I sometimes wish I could become the breeze that whistles through leaves, or become the roots that anchor themselves deep into the ground for a tree to keep it upright.  The forest does not care who I am, what I am, or what I look like; it does not make any demands of me, except to respect its cycles – it allows me to be there with it as I am.

I can be.  Nothing else matters.

Sometimes it is good to come back to where you are to take stock and reflect on where to go or what to do next.  Being amongst the trees helps me come back to me, and quieten down everything else enough to allow desires to emerge.

And when those desires emerge, I look into the sky for what the future will be like with them in my life.  I daydream about the possible journeys to get there – the skills I’ll need or want, the things I’ll do, te people I could meet, find my allies, recognise possible issues along the way and convince myself I’ll figure it out if it comes to that.

The earth holds my present, the starting point; the skies hold my future, the distant shores where it will all end.

I need both.

 

More music!

Amelie OST
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Goo Goo Dolls
Lady Gaga
Haven
Chicago
Final Fantasy VII OST
Angela Aki (+ Keep On Dreaming All Your Life)
Sara Bareilles
Darren Hayes

~*~

Next week, I’ll show you the feeling that has been with me all my life and which continues to pull me into the future: Dynamic

 

Love,

Catherine

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